


Once There Was

by didoandis



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fairy Tale Elements, First Time, I'm British so's my spelling, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Magic, Multi, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon, Spells & Enchantments, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:34:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26028796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/didoandis/pseuds/didoandis
Summary: When Yennefer reaches the stairs outside there’s no trace of Jaskier; no footsteps in the snow. Nothing but his lute, abandoned on the first step. At a loss, she picks it up, the wood warm and heavy in her arms.There are no dancers in the ballroom when she returns. No sign of Geralt. A small man in a servant’s uniform bustles up to her.“Thank all the gods he left the lute!” he announces. “We shall send searchers from house to house, in every town in all the land, for whosoever can play the lute is the man you danced with, and he shall be your husband!”Yennefer stares at him for a long time, until he starts to squirm under her gaze. “First of all,” she says, “we weren’t dancing, we were arguing. Second of all, that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Third of all, I already know who I was arguing with, and I have absolutely no intention of marrying the idiot.”When you’re caught in a fairytale, the only way to get free is to find a happy ending.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 54
Kudos: 395





	Once There Was

Once, there was a princess. Her hair was gold as corn, or black as coal, but her skin was always white as snow and her lips ruby red. She was lying in a glass coffin or asleep behind thorns or locked in a tower. 

Whatever. The important thing is: the princess needs rescuing. That’s how the story goes. She’s a prize, a treasure, a conquest, something to win, something to claim. 

No one ever asks the princess if she wants to be rescued. No one expects the prince to do anything but save her. No one writes about what happens after. 

The invitation came on heavy card, printed with ornate calligraphy, bordered with gilt:

_The Lord of Kaer Sond requests the kind attendance of the Sorceress Yennefer of Vengerberg at his Winter Ball, on the solstice, in honour of his daughter’s betrothal. There will be feasting, music and merriment._

Yennefer turns it over in her hands. There’s a faint spark of magic lingering on the paper, a direction spell perhaps. Interesting. She’s never heard of Kaer Sond, and she thought she was well versed on all the petty principalities in the north. She wonders why they want her at their festivities; she’s not exactly worth currying favour with, these days. Most people seeking her want her head. 

She leaves the invitation lying on the table and goes to stand by the window looking out over the icy streets. She can’t even remember the name of the town she’s in at the moment, it was just a convenient stopping place, a week or so ago. She’s not been out since she arrived. The servants are only too happy to fetch and carry for her. 

Her fingers drum briefly at the windowsill. Though she hates to admit it, she’s bored. It’s been two weeks since Sodden Hill, enough time for her chaos to settle back down into something approaching normal. She’s tired of hiding. She doesn’t miss court, gods forbid, but the intrigue and gossip and vague curiosity about who would try to stab her in the back next at least kept things _interesting_. 

It’s doubtful that the nuptials of a minor noble’s daughter will offer much of a distraction, but a castle ought to have decent beds and baths and meals and right now that’s novelty enough. 

With a quick flick of her wrist she pulls her belongings into the depthless case she travels with, and wipes any memory of her stay from the mind of the house’s owner. She touches the invitation, feels the thread of its journey from _there_ to _here_ and opens a portal to Kaer Sond. 

When she steps through, as ever, she leaves nothing of herself behind. 

The portal takes her to the top of a winding stone path that expands into a large forecourt. Kaer Sond is ahead of her, and it’s like nothing she’s ever seen before: perched on the ridge of a mountain, beautiful and entirely defenceless. There’s no moat, no thick walls or towers for archers to stand guard. The walls are white, rearing from the snow-dusted ground like they’ve grown naturally. The main part of the castle is three storeys high, with glass in all the windows; there are four small towers at each corner, two taller ones on either side, and a separate square one with a balcony and another round tower atop it near the ruby-red gatehouse. Embellishments and extra outcroppings of buildings cling with abandon to all four walls. It’s pretty, impractical and utterly absurd, like the dream of a madman or a child. 

The windows are glowing with yellow light in the gathering dusk, promising warmth and shelter, and yet she hesitates. Magic must have been used in the construction, and yet she’s never heard of the place. She doesn’t entirely trust it. But she’s curious. Who built it? Why did they send for her? 

It takes her barely any time to reach the gates, as if once her intention settled the castle moved towards her, welcoming her in. She shivers in the swirl of the cold mountain wind, and pushes gently on the tall wooden gates. 

“Don’t go in there,” a voice whispers behind her, high pitched and musical, yet when she turns there’s no one there, just a small bird perched on the low wall next to the entrance. It preens its feathers as she stares, and flies off in a flash of bright cobalt blue. 

She shakes her head and pushes again at the gates, which give way soundless and smooth beneath her fingers. On the other side, a rectangular courtyard passes the square tower and a row of mews before ending in a grand staircase that curves up and round to a pair of shining silver doors. In the distance she can hear music, lute and viol, and the hum of voices and laughter. She’s suddenly both exhausted and ravenous, and picks up the pace. It’s odd, she decides as she walks, that there are no guards, no servants, but then again if the lord of Kaer Sond is capable of building such a place, he’s surely powerful enough to protect himself. 

The silver doors open as easily as the gates, and she finds herself in a ballroom blazing with light and sound. Couples whirl merrily through the space, a profusion of glitter and colour and grace. When she looks down at herself she sees the black dress she was wearing transformed into a gown of deepest purple. The air is full of chaos, but not like any she’s experienced; it seems to float free, not tied to a single sorcerer, but emanating from every spinning pair of dancers. 

Her fingers itch to tear at the spell but she calms herself and takes another step forward into the throng, and blinks, and… 

She’s dancing, held tightly in strong arms, and she dips her head gently into a firm chest, quite content. This is everything she’s ever hoped for, after all, to be wanted, to be loved, and she gives herself over to it, blissfully happy. 

“Yennefer,” her dance partner says, rough and full of some deep emotion, and she looks up into golden eyes. 

“Geralt,” she breathes, and then he’s bending down to kiss her and she’s reaching up, and as their lips meet she could swear she sees sparkles in the air around them.

Chaos surrounds her; Geralt’s medallion vibrates between their bodies; and an angry voice shouts “hey!” 

The sparkles vanish and she pushes Geralt away, utterly furious. How dare he! How dare he hold her, kiss her, like he hadn’t lied, hadn’t bound her in the worst way possible. 

“Get away from me, witcher,” she spits, and he takes one stumbling step back, his face easing from hurt to blankness, and then he turns and takes another woman in his arms as if Yennefer never existed. She stares after him, the sharp roil of anger still in her, but warring with the first faint sense of concern. 

“Oh, this is all I need,” the angry voice hisses behind her and she looks round to see Geralt’s bard, lute slung over his back, hands on hips. He’s wearing a ridiculous outfit in bright yellow and for a brief moment she wishes she could rend him in two.

“I could say the same to you,” she snaps back. “What the fuck are you doing here?” 

“I was _invited_ ,” Jaskier says, and she dips into his mind to see it: _the Lord of Kaer Sond requests the kind attendance of Jaskier the Bard_ … The same invitation, the same smell of magic. 

“How did you get here?” she asks and Jaskier blinks. 

“I… d’you know, I can’t quite remember,” he tells her. Then scowls again. “I hardly think that’s relevant.” 

“What _is_ relevant, then, bard?” she demands, tightening her hand around his arm. 

“That Geralt and I were having a perfectly nice time before you showed up to ruin things again, that’s what!” The venom in his tone would be amusing, except this time she can tell he actually _means_ it, isn’t just being petty and blowing off steam. 

She looks past him, sees Geralt dipping his new dance partner low to the ground, his body a perfect diagonal line. “Is that the kind of perfectly nice time you’d expect him to be having?” she asks and Jaskier turns to watch. His eyes narrow. 

“Well,” he says, “when you put it like that, I suppose it is strange that he’s dancing.” 

Geralt smiles widely and the torchlight glints off his teeth. 

“He seems to be enjoying it,” Yennefer says, slowly.

“Yes,” Jaskier says, “I see what you mean. That’s quite disconcerting.” He wraps his arms around himself, shivering, though the room is warm. 

From somewhere above them, a clock begins to strike. The dancers freeze in place, as if suspended in time. 

Jaskier gasps. “What is it?” she asks, though she doesn’t much care, focused on trying to trace whatever spell is keeping the room locked in stillness. 

“The clock,” he mutters. “I can’t stay, I can’t be here— When the clock strikes midnight—” He’s scrabbling away, frantic and shaking, and she holds his arm to stay him. 

“What happens when the clock strikes midnight?” she asks, but he only sobs and twists out of her grasp, fleeing towards the silver doors. She follows, but the air has grown thick; it’s like pushing through water. She can’t catch up. 

When she reaches the stairs outside there’s no trace of Jaskier; no footsteps in the snow. Nothing but his lute, abandoned on the first step. At a loss, she picks it up, the wood warm and heavy in her arms. 

There are no dancers in the ballroom when she returns. No sign of Geralt. A small man in a servant’s uniform bustles up to her. 

“Thank all the gods he left the lute!” he announces. “We shall send searchers from house to house, in every town in all the land, for whosoever can play the lute is the man you danced with, and he shall be your husband!” 

Yennefer stares at him for a long time, until he starts to squirm under her gaze. “First of all,” she says, “we weren’t dancing, we were arguing. Second of all, that is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in my life. Third of all, I already know who I was arguing with, and I have absolutely no intention of marrying the idiot.” 

A small high voice whispers, “don’t fight it, it’s easier if you don’t fight it,” but Yennefer has never backed down from a fight and she wants out of this castle, this room, this ridiculous dress. She clenches her fists, calls her chaos to her, and promptly passes out. 

_You’ve already lost me, she tells Geralt. She hands him an apple. He bites deep._

She opens her eyes to whiteness. Snow on the ground, in the trees. Close by, she can hear whistling, and when she turns sees Jaskier again, leaning against a birch. Above him a bluebird is perched on a branch. It seems familiar, but she can’t quite say why.

“Hello, witch,” Jaskier greets her. 

“Bard,” she answers. She turns in a slow circle. There’s nothing but forest. No castle, no torchlight in the distance. “Are we near Kaer Sond?”

“Where?” Jaskier asks, and as he speaks she forgets her own question. The bluebird trills sharply, and flies off to the right, a feather falling down to land shimmering on the snow. She picks it up and tucks it into her sleeve. She can feel something tugging at her, pulling her to the right. 

“I was looking for Geralt,” Jaskier says cheerily. “He’s wandered off again, the scamp.”

“Yes,” Yennefer says. She can picture Geralt’s eyes, on the mountain, deep hurt and anger intermingled. “Yes, I think we should find him. I think he might be in trouble.” 

_He bites the apple. He falls._

She shudders and the dream drifts away. The woods are cold; her breath hangs on the air. She starts walking, and Jaskier falls into step beside her. 

They’ve been going for five minutes when she finds another blue feather on the path, as if the bird is leading them in the right direction. When Yennefer pauses to consider it, she can taste magic. Something about this is unnatural, uncanny. She says, “Jaskier, what do you remember?”

“There was a wolf,” Jaskier says thoughtfully. “I think it wanted to eat me.” 

Well, that’s no help. “When was this?” 

He kicks up snow. “I’m… not sure,” he says. “Feels like it happened just this minute but also a long time ago. That’s peculiar, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know why we’re here,” Yennefer says. “I think we’re part of a spell.” 

“What have you done this time, witch?” Jaskier demands, suddenly harsh, cruel. “Always going where you’re not wanted; always getting in the way; they made you into a beauty but you’re not one, are you; you’re a twisted peasant who belongs in a pigsty; you can’t bear anyone to be better than you—” The words spill out, and she can feel them like needles on her skin, digging in. 

“Jaskier, stop!” she cries, and silence rings in her ears. 

Then he says, “Geralt!” – nothing but delight in his voice, as if the previous words were never spoken. He starts running, and she follows, panting as if she’s been struck. She doesn’t know what’s happening. She _hates_ not knowing what’s happening. 

In a clearing in the woods, someone has built a coffin, heaped round with flowers. The base is made of gold, the top of glass. Geralt is lying inside the coffin. He’s wearing his armour, holding his swords. His eyes are closed, his skin pale, his hair loose and long and pure white, cleaner than she’s ever seen it. _Beautiful_ , she thinks, though the word leaves a bitter taste on her tongue. They’re both beautiful, both transformed, and it cost them both dear. 

Jaskier is pushing at the coffin lid. “Help me,” he says, “we need to get him out.” She lends her strength to his, and the glass shifts slowly, falls and breaks on the snow, shards glinting. It looks like a shattered mirror. 

(She can see her face, her twisted face, reflected back at her, and she knows she will never be worth anything, and she strikes at the glass and looks down at her wrists…)

“Yennefer,” Jaskier says. He’s staring at her, worried. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she tells him. “What about Geralt?”

Jaskier turns to the witcher, still lying on the bier. He leans over Geralt’s body, touches his chest and bends his ear to Geralt’s mouth. “I think he might be dead,” he says after a moment.

“Nonsense,” Yennefer says briskly. “The man’s unkillable. I should know, lots of people have tried. Me included.” She steps up next to Jaskier, and has to admit that he does _look_ dead. Paler even than normal, no breath in his lungs. 

There’s a beautiful red apple lying at his feet, perfect except for a single bite. “He’s been poisoned,” she says; she’s not sure where the knowledge comes from, but she’s certain of it. 

“Was it you?” Jaskier asks bitterly. “Couldn’t stand to see him again, knowing that he saved your life?”

“He didn’t save me,” she snaps. “He _bound_ me. But that’s beside the point. I don’t wish him dead.” 

“We need to cure him,” Jaskier says, and leans over, kisses Geralt softly on the lips. He looks solemn, as if this is a moment of great dignity and significance, and not a desperate man snogging a corpse. 

“What are you doing that for?” she demands, and Jaskier turns away, tears in his eyes. 

“True love’s kiss,” he murmurs. “I was hoping… but here we are. Your turn,” he adds bitterly. “I always knew he loved you the best.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she tells him. “He doesn’t love me; nor I him. It’s a curse that ties us, haven’t you been paying attention?” 

“For gods’ sake,” Jaskier says, “can you not just be happy you’ve won? True love’s kiss will break the spell, all the stories say so.” 

“Stories are bullshit to make children think the world is fair,” Yennefer snaps. “I’m an adult. I’m done playing these stupid games.” She turns to glare up at the sky. “Release us!” 

The clouds above the trees roll in, dark and threatening, and the world around them fades to white.

She’s lying on a bed in a round room. The bed is facing a high window. There are shelves of books, a dresser, white drapes at the windows, shifting in the breeze. The portrait of a young woman hangs on one of the walls. Her hair is black, her eyes are green, her lips are ruby red. She’s very beautiful. She’s holding a golden cage with a bluebird inside. 

Yennefer gets off the bed, and goes to the window. Far below her she can see the courtyard and the crazed elegance that is Kaer Sond rearing up against the sky. She’s in the square tower that she passed on the way in. She looks behind her. There’s no door, no way out but the window. 

A small bluebird is perched on the window ledge. “You again,” Yennefer says. 

“Me again,” the bird agrees. 

_What the fuck._

“I told you not to go inside,” the bird says. It sounds cross. Like a young woman having a tantrum. Yennefer glances at the portrait and then back. 

“I didn’t ask your opinion,” she points out. 

“Well you should,” the bird says, sulkily. “I’ve been here ages, watching you. The stories don’t end when they’re meant to, and I don’t know why!”

“Stories aren’t real,” Yennefer says. 

The bird flies a slow circuit of the room before landing on the bed. “They are here,” it says, and a chill crawls up Yennefer’s spine, and for a moment she feels it _twist_. As if to remind her: everything she is now could be taken away, leaving her a child again, the kind of child who dreamed of heroes, and rescues, and things being fair. 

She snarls, and reaches out to unravel the spell around her. 

“That won’t work,” the bird says. “You’ve tried it before.” 

“I’ve never been here before,” Yennefer says. 

“You have, though,” the bird says. It sounds tired but mostly petulant. “Once there was a witch who imprisoned a child in a tower, with no doors and no stairs, and the only way the witch could get in was by climbing the girl’s long golden hair.” It cocks its head on one side. “I can’t tell if you’re meant to be the witch or the girl.” 

“And what do you know about it?” Yennefer asks. She feels cold. How long has she been here? Is any of this real? She remembers Jaskier fleeing the ballroom, Geralt dead and held under glass. It feels both familiar and new. How many times have they repeated their steps, whirled round in each others’ arms, caught in this strange magic? 

“I just know the stories,” the bird says. “I don’t remember clearly, but I think I used to be a princess.” 

Yennefer throws her arms up in exasperation. “What does that _mean_?” she demands. “What’s the point of all this?”

The bird, as far as birds can be said to have expressions, looks puzzled. “I’m not sure,” it says. “I thought it was to find a happy ending, but that doesn’t seem to help.” 

Yennefer’s fingers itch; she wants to blast it far away from her. She’s distracted by a sound out of the window. When she looks down, she sees Geralt, far below. He’s stabbing daggers into the stone one after another, pulling himself up slowly and painstakingly. “You have to be joking,” she mutters. 

“He’s come to save you,” the bird says. “It’s sweet.” 

“It’s patronising,” Yennefer says, “and ridiculous, and unnecessary. I have _never_ needed saving.” 

“So find a way out then,” the bird says sarcastically, and flies out of the window. Yennefer resists the urge to hurl something after it, and sits on the bed. She can hear Geralt grunting with the effort of climbing; does her best to ignore it. If she concentrates, she can feel the magic around her, twisting and looping. It tastes like despair and rage, the desperate flailing of someone caught in a trap. Yennefer can trace the shape of it: there’s a captive power at its heart, and that power has pushed outwards, drawing others into the web, till they’re all prisoners together. 

She touches what feels like a knot and tugs, and hears a plaintive young voice saying “ _it was my wedding day_ ” and then the pattern shifts and fades beneath her hands, withdrawing from her reach. She sighs in frustration. 

Jaskier says, “what are you doing now, witch?” 

She turns, briefly dizzy. They’re still in the tower, but the portrait of the green-eyed woman is gone, and Jaskier is lounging on the bed. He looks like he did when they first met, white shirt stained with blood, though sadly this time he’s awake. There is something not quite right about him, not quite _him_. The spell pulses around them, leaving her free, but tangling around him tightly. 

She says, “I could ask you the same question, nuisance.” 

“Oh, that’s rich.” He rolls his eyes. “Not content with locking me up in a tower, you insult me too? I thought you wanted to keep me safe.”

“I don’t particularly care about you,” Yennefer says. What was it the bird told her? That it didn’t know whether Yennefer was the princess or the witch. She guesses she’s the witch this time, which makes Jaskier the princess. She allows herself a thin smile at the thought.

Outside she can hear Geralt again, climbing the tower brick by painful brick. 

“You see,” Jaskier announces proudly, “that’s my love, coming to rescue me.” He sneers at her, and it’s both like and unlike him, arrogant but overly certain. The Jaskier she knew was never that sure of Geralt’s affection, for all he followed the witcher like a hopeful dog. 

“I’m not the one you need to be rescued from,” she says, and for once that’s true. She moves to take his hand, reaching through bones and sinew and flesh for the spirit, trying to decide if it’s really him, if he and Geralt are really here, or simply a manifestation of the enchantment’s hold upon her. 

It’s hard to do, harder than it should be; she can feel her chaos pouring out of her into nothing. He feels far away, as if the spell has wrapped him in its net and then let him fall. She has to go a long way to find him but it _is_ him, truly; she can tell. She blinks and sees him, somewhere else, lying on broken cobblestones, covered in a light dusting of snow. His eyes are closed, his skin tinged with blue. He looks dead. 

“Jaskier,” she says, shocked despite herself, and is back in the tower, and—

“Yennefer,” he says, gasping like he’s only just learned how to breathe. “What are you doing here? Am I dreaming?” 

“It’s a spell,” she tells him. “We’re caught in a fairytale. Handsome princes and lost princesses and wicked witches. I think Geralt got here first and that must have drawn the two of us in somehow. It’s incredibly stupid and I can’t figure out how to break it.” 

“Huh,” Jaskier says, and she watches him think about it. “That _would_ explain why I keep meeting a talking bird.” 

“Has it said anything useful?”

“Not that I remember.” His eyes go blank again. “I’m not sure how much I remember. I was looking for Geralt. And I think I found him, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.” 

“He’s climbing the tower; he’ll be here to rescue you any minute,” Yennefer says. “That’s what I don’t understand. If the point is to recreate these ridiculous stories, why doesn’t the happy ending break the spell?”

“Maybe because we aren’t happy with them,” Jaskier says. He looks briefly bitter before his face returns to the amiable contempt he always greets her with. “We all know you don’t ever lift a finger to help anyone or let anyone help you, are you surprised when the endings don’t suit you?” 

“And you?” she asks, more stung than she’d like to admit.

“I know Geralt doesn’t really want to find me,” he says. “And I’m certainly not his one true love.” His mouth twists. “You rejected him, he rejected me, it was a whole thing.” 

“Idiot,” Yennefer mutters, because isn’t that typical of Geralt, pushing anyone who’s ever got close to him as far away as he can manage. She ignores the part of her pointing out she did it first. 

“The difference between you and me is that I forgave him about five hours after he yelled at me,” Jaskier says, ruefully. 

“The difference between you and me,” Yennefer says, “is that you chose to fall in love with him, and I didn’t.” 

Jaskier shrugs at her. He seems quite relaxed about it. She wonders what it’s like, to be that sure of what you feel, of what you want. When she concentrates she can feel the bond that ties her to Geralt. It itches under her skin. How can she ever trust the way she reacts to his presence? 

But she knows Jaskier loves the witcher; knows that Geralt reciprocates, even if he won’t admit it. So the stories turning on the two of them ought to work. So why aren’t they? She huffs out a frustrated breath. She can still hear Geralt making his slow way up the tower, which isn’t helping.

“They’re all nonsense anyway,” Jaskier says eventually. He’s staring off into the distance, tapping his fingers on the bed. “Fairytales. They’re not about happiness, they’re warnings. Don’t cross people with power. Don’t stray off the path. Always be good and kind and you’ll get what you deserve. They sell you on the hope that if you’re virtuous the suffering will end. I tell lies for a living, I should know.” 

She always forgets he’s smarter than he looks, not that it’s hard. “So what do we do instead?”

Jaskier’s eyes soften slightly. “What you’ve always done, witch. Tell your own damn story.” 

She nods at him, touches his hand briefly. He’s freezing, and she remembers how she saw him, alone in the snow. Whatever’s happening, she doesn’t think they have much time left. 

“Will you be all right?” she asks. 

Jaskier grins at her. “It’s like you said. I’m sure Geralt will be along any minute.” 

She nods at him, and turns away. The wall where the portrait hung is bare, the plaster cracked. She faces it, summons all her strength, and when a door appears she walks through it. 

She’s in a large hall, the floor strewn with rushes. Long wooden tables line it, filled with men in armour, eating and drinking. On one wall a tapestry hangs, displaying a coat of arms she’s never seen before, white and gold and red. In front of that wall is a high table, and in the middle of it the green-eyed woman is sitting, dressed all in white. She looks proud and pleased and very young. _Her wedding day_ , Yennefer thinks. The man beside her is not a handsome prince, but he has something: power bleeds from him, power and conviction. She shivers. There’s a tension in the air. Something bad is about to happen. 

The woman at the table meets her eyes. She looks furious. She raises her hand, and Yennefer is blasted backwards, out of the rough hall. As she flies, she can hear screams, the crackling of fire, and she desperately tries to stay, to see what’s happening, but it’s no use. She has no power left in her at all. 

When the world comes into shape again, she’s back in the ballroom at Kaer Sond. She’s wearing the enormous, impractical purple gown again, and Geralt is kneeling in front of her. She’s freezing, shaking with the cold. If she turns her head quickly, she sees snow drifting down; when she looks again it’s little glimmers of light, as if the air itself is shining. 

Geralt reaches up to hold her hand. He’s taken one of his potions; his eyes are colourless wells and his veins stand out black on his skin.

“Yennefer,” he says. “You came back for me.” 

“Not for you,” she says. “Listen to me, Geralt. You need to resist whatever script they have you following.”

“My love,” he whispers. He looks like he means it, damn him. She tries to pull away, but he’s stronger than her; without her magic she’s drained, too weak. She’s not sure she can do this on her own, but she can see he’ll be no help to her. She has to walk away from this play while she still remembers that she can. 

Geralt stands and embraces her. For a moment, she lets herself be held. It’s not wholly the spell. He could always tell how much she longed to set herself aside and be someone simple, someone worthy of care. 

“Yen,” Geralt says into her hair. “I don’t have much time. I’ll die if you don’t love me.” 

“Oh, please,” she says, and the words spill out unbidden. She’s not entirely sure they’re her thoughts. “They might call you a beast, but all you are is a man, and men are the same the world over. They say they’ll save us, but the safety is a cage; they say they love us, but their love is a trap. They threaten to die without us and then kill us to keep us. There’s no such thing as true love, and no man has ever rescued me; I rescued myself.” 

“Is that what you think?” Geralt laughs, but it’s not Geralt, not truly. It’s the story. His face flickers: Istredd, Stregobor, the mage who transformed her, the king of Aedirn, Borch Three Jackdaws, Geralt again. “You think you’d be here without any of us?”

She feels like herself again. She pushes him from her. “I make my own choices,” she insists. “Not all of them were good but I made them and only you ever tried to take that from me. So fuck you, witcher, and your wishes, and your nobility, and your love; I don’t want any of it.” 

“Yen,” he says again, and this time it _is_ him, she can see the real him in there, the man who keeps trying to do the right thing even though he doesn’t expect to get anything from it. “I only know I’m not a beast because you love me.”

“You can stop being a beast on your own,” Yennefer says, turning away. “It’s nothing to do with me.” 

He snarls, and when she looks back he’s transformed, truly monstrous; spines erupting from his back, bristles bursting through his skin. The silver doors behind him crash open and an army of men spill in, Jaskier at their head. He’s carrying a torch in one hand, a pitchfork in the other. “Kill the beast,” he cries, clear and high, and the mob gathered around him yell, and Yennefer runs. She’s seen armies like that before; they mow down everyone in their path. There’s no room for mercy when the blood is up. 

On the other side of the doors at the far end of the ballroom she finds a winding staircase and races up it. At some point she realises the bluebird is flying beside her. 

“That went well,” it says. 

“Shut up,” Yennefer says, and keeps climbing. “I don’t hear you coming up with any bright ideas.” 

Far below them she hears Geralt roar and Jaskier cry out. The air is getting colder. She finds that she’s shaking again, breath coming in great heaving pants. 

“I think it might be too late,” the bluebird says. “I think you’re dying.” 

Yennefer stops moving. The bird lands on her shoulder and pecks miserably at her hair. “What do you mean?” 

“The spell,” the bird says. “It has to get its energy from somewhere. Can’t you feel it?” 

It’s right, Yennefer realises with growing horror. She and Geralt and Jaskier are caught in this thing, which means they’re powering it. No wonder she’s so cold, has found it so hard to draw on her chaos. They’re being bled dry. “Fuck,” she says, and clenches her fists. “Show me!” she screams at the stone walls around her. “Please! I want to understand! What happened to you?” 

The air stills. The sounds from the ballroom drop away. Yennefer waits, as if looking down into an abyss, waiting for the ground to give way beneath her. Everything is held suspended. 

“Please,” she says, softer now. “There’s no rescue for either of us. But perhaps we can help each other.” 

A great gust of wind sweeps through the staircase, and Yennefer falls. 

“Once there was a princess,” the green-eyed woman says. 

She’s sitting at a table, wearing her wedding dress, looking into a mirror, brushing her hair. Yennefer is standing behind her, half visible, ghostly.

“This was a long time ago,” Yennefer says. The furniture in the room is rough and heavy; the mirror polished silver. This isn’t the world she knows. 

“Centuries,” the woman agrees. “She was beautiful, the princess. Everybody told her so. She could look into the mirror and see it.” 

Yennefer takes the comb from her and starts brushing through her long fine hair. “What happened?” she asks. 

“Her father’s kingdom was small, but the land was good. When the invaders came raiding, he knew he could not fight, but he had something better to offer than war. His beautiful darling daughter, by whose hand the old and new powers would be united.” The woman meets Yennefer’s eyes. “I was _excited_ ,” she says. “It was my wedding day.” 

Yennefer doesn’t want to hear what happens next. She knows how this kind of story goes. 

“My husband didn’t even wait till the end of the day to commence the slaughter,” the woman says. Yennefer can hear it now, hanging in the air around her words: the clash of steel. The screams. The woman screaming loudest of all, until she’s the only one left screaming. 

“He didn’t love me,” the woman whispers. “He was a monster. He loved power, and land, and terror. But he wanted a legacy. He wanted a son.” 

“Don’t,” Yennefer says. Her hands are over her ears to shut out the sounds. The pain, oh gods. There’s so much pain. The stones around her are bleeding with it. 

“That’s all I was,” the woman says. She’s standing now, looking Yennefer in the eyes. Her face is polished bone, still screaming. “The land that he ploughed. The soil where his seed grew. And finally fertiliser for the good green fields that he stole from my father.” 

“You are so much more than that,” Yennefer manages to say, pushing the words out against the terrible, terrible storm of fear and loss and rage. “You made all this—” She throws her hands out, encompassing the dream that is Kaer Sond, the castle in the air a girl might invent, in the dark, in grief and madness. 

The skull’s empty eyes stare into her. Yennefer feels it still: the fury, the shame. “I can’t punish people who won’t change!” Kaer Sond’s dead princess cries, and her shriek builds and builds and tears Yennefer apart. 

She’s trapped in the net of the spell, entangled, pricked round and round, the distress of it tearing at her flesh— 

And then, quite suddenly, she isn’t. 

“Yen,” Geralt says, and catches her as she falls. 

She blames the cold for the way that she clings to him. When she steps away, his expression is wilder than she’s ever seen it. He’s covered in scratches, his clothes torn. She looks around. They’re standing in the midst of briars, as far as the eye can see, climbing over walls and ruins and what look very much like bodies, thankfully too covered over in vines and vegetation to see clearly. Kaer Sond’s victims, old and new. 

“Where’s Jaskier?” Yennefer asks. “I understand it now. I think.” She brings a shaking hand to her forehead. It’s bleeding. “And have you seen the bird?”

Geralt looks at her, concerned, and she clicks her fingers at him. “I’m not mad,” she says. “We’re caught in a story. The desperate revenge of a woman who dreamed of princes and princesses and got chewed up and spat out by real life instead. I have half an idea, but we’re going to need your bard.” 

“Hmmm,” Geralt says, but doesn’t argue; there are times when she can be grateful for his muteness. He starts hacking at the vines and briars, cutting a slow path forward. Yennefer follows him as close as she can, feeling the thorns tear at her skirts, graze her flesh. The spell is fighting back. It won’t let them go easily. 

She hears birdsong in the distance and thrusts her fist up as high as she can reach. A minute later the bluebird lands on her fingers. It’s trembling, feathers in disarray. “You went away,” it says, accusingly, to the both of them. 

“I’m back,” Yennefer says, soothing it with a stroke of her fingers. She holds it close to her chest, feels its warmth and the fast beat of its heart. Geralt says nothing. 

Cutting the path through the forest takes a long time. Yennefer can feel her tiredness grow with every step. The brambles are sinking their teeth into her, draining her harder and faster than she can remember. The spell is ravenous. She understands that now. It’s strong, this death-dream; they have to break it, fast. If she closes her eyes, she can see the snow falling around her. The barrier between the story and the real world is fading, and when it’s gone altogether she suspects they’ll be beyond saving. 

“Are we close?” she asks, shivering. 

He nods. “It’s like a pull,” he explains. “I could sense you, and now I can sense him.” 

“How nice that you get both of us waiting for you to save us,” she says bitterly. 

The next strike of his sword is particularly violent. “I’m sorry,” he says. 

There’s a long silence. “And…?” she prompts.

“I wished for our fates to be tied. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want you to die. I didn’t know what would happen.” 

“Of course you didn’t think,” she says. “When do men ever think about the consequences of their actions?” 

When she looks at him, he’s almost smiling. “The first time we met I nearly got executed because you enspelled me to sort out your problems.” 

“It’s not the same,” she says. Though it’s also not untrue, that she saw him as a weapon only, a means to an end. 

“I do know,” he says. “I’m just saying. Neither of us think much beyond what we want to happen next. I care for you, that’s all, and I can’t say whether it’s the djinn or me, but it feels the same to me. It’s the same way I care about Jaskier, and—” He cuts off, frowning. 

“What is it?” 

“There’s something I need to do,” he mutters. “Something I was doing. It’s important.” He looks, insofar as he ever looks anything, deeply distressed. His pale face looks suddenly like a mask, about to crack. 

“Don’t think about it,” she says, quickly. “Focus, Geralt, we can’t afford for you to get lost in the spell again.” 

In her hands, the bluebird is quivering. She strokes it gently. 

The tangle of briars and vines gives way under Geralt’s sword and widens out into a chamber. It’s the room where Yennefer saw the princess: a bed, a mirror, a wooden dresser. Jaskier is lying on the bed, fast asleep, lute clutched in one hand. He’s wearing the red outfit from the mountain. Geralt rushes to him, then pauses. He reaches a hand out slowly, pushes Jaskier’s limp hair from his forehead. 

The bard sleeps on, sunken into himself. The space between worlds is getting narrower; Yennefer can feel the cold rolling from him, the way his body is wasted from the spell. She and Geralt have more to give; they’ll last longer. Jaskier is only human. 

“You should kiss him,” Yennefer says. “That’s how these things work, I’m told.” 

Geralt breathes in, looks away from her, and leans over to press his lips to Jaskier’s. They make a pretty sight: the black-clad, white-haired witcher, set against the pink cheeks and brown hair and bright clothes of his companion. They deserve each other, Yennefer thinks, and can’t quite tell whether she means it as a compliment. 

Jaskier sleeps on. The bluebird flutters its way out of her hands and says conversationally, “In some versions of this story, the princess doesn’t wake up till the prince sleeps with her.” 

Geralt grunts an appalled grunt. So that’s out. Pity. 

Yennefer sits down and takes Jaskier’s icy hand in hers, chafing it. She’s down to the last dredges of her power, and she uses it to follow the binding of the spell, casting herself out into the void. “Princess,” she whispers. “What punishment did you impose on the one who wronged you? Why didn’t it work?”

In her head, the words take shape: _he never changed. He always came to conquer. It was always about power. And no one who came after ever loved selflessly either._

“For fuck’s sake!” Yennefer cries, and sees Geralt flinch. She can see it now, the trap. A child who thought love was a fairytale, spinning these stories for centuries, pulling in life after life, lover after lover, waiting for someone whose love was untainted by lust, or want, or need. Searching, then, for the impossible, for something that will never happen. 

There’s no way out. They’re going to die here. 

The bluebird lands on Jaskier’s hair and starts pulling at it, sharp aggravating little tugs. As Yennefer watches, disbelieving, one of his hands twitches, and he raises it to bat the bird away. 

“Jaskier!” Geralt says, and he blinks. 

“’m so tired,” he murmurs. “Five more minutes.” 

She slaps him, unrepentant when he glares. “We don’t have time. We need a story.”

“A what?” His eyes are wide and somehow faded; she can see him struggling to keep them open as he sits up. “Why? What are you doing here? Why is my room a forest?” 

“You’re a teller of tales, aren’t you?” Yennefer demands. “Neither Geralt or I had the kind of childhood where people told us bedtime stories, so it has to be you. We need something new, something that isn’t about a prince and a princess, something that doesn’t end in marriage. Something more complicated. Something that feels real.” 

Jaskier gapes at her, and brings his lute into his lap, holding it to him like a protective shield. “I—” he says, but before he can finish the thought the vines filling the room twist, start creeping over the flagstones, twining around Yennefer’s ankles. The spell is pulling them down again, and she fears this time they’ll never get out. 

“Jaskier!” she shouts, putting the full force of her wrath into it, seeing him jump. “Now! Do it now!” 

“Once there was a mirror!” Jaskier cries, bent over his lute like something heavy is pressing down on his body, something he barely has the strength to stand against. 

Bright colours flash in front of Yennefer’s eyes. The world – pauses – and – _twists_ – 

And—

_Once there was a mirror. A twisted reflection of everything that was good and true and fair. No one knows who made it, but everyone has heard the story of how it broke, scattering shards of itself the world over. If some of the dust got in your eye, you would see the world as ugly, full of mean faces and cruel words. If a fragment got in your heart, you would turn mean yourself, harsh and cold and unforgiving…_

Yennefer is sitting in front of a mirror, looking herself in the eye. She can see her face, her twisted face, reflected back at her, and she knows she will never be worth anything, and she strikes at the glass and looks down at her wrists…

But no. Instead she touches her tongue to one of the shards of glass. It’s cold. It cuts her. The blood floods her mouth with the sharp taste of copper. 

She doesn’t care. She won’t care about anything again. Only herself, only what she wants. It’s the only way to be safe. 

A bluebird flies in front of her, and she gets up to follow it, through the halls of Aretuza, along a beach, and into a house, and across the ridge of a mountain, and at last to a castle. The castle is a ruin: thick stone walls crumbled and collapsed. Here and there, skeletons lie abandoned. 

The bird leads her up a winding staircase to a room at the top of a tall tower. Half the floor is missing. On one side, cowering against the wall, is a small boy, with brown curls and brown eyes. He’s playing with fragments of a broken mirror, scattered across the rotten floor. 

“What are you doing here, child?” she asks him. 

“My mother left me,” the boy says. “Glass got in my eye, and my heart, and she turned away. I could see her crying. She said she didn’t want me anymore. She won’t want me until I finish the puzzle.” 

“What puzzle?” The boards of the room barely take her weight; they sing when she steps on them. She moves anyway. 

“I have to make a word,” the boy says, gesturing at the fragments. “But I don’t know which one.” He looks up, tears in his eyes. “Will you help me?”

“I’ll try,” Yennefer promises. She can feel water in her own eyes, and she blinks, and when they clear she feels better somehow, as if something has been washed away. She kneels down by the boy, and looks at the swirl of shards. His hands are cut and bleeding from his many attempts at arranging them. She can’t make sense of the shapes they make, doesn’t even know where to start. 

_He has to find the answer_ , a voice whispers in her ear, low and ragged and exhausted. _Yennefer, please, I can’t keep this going much longer…_

Yennefer shakes her head, shaking away the memory of the voice, of all the voices that press and demand and insist. All she’s ever had are the choices she’s made, and maybe they weren’t good choices, maybe what lay before her was no choice at all, but still: no one else chose for her. She says, “What do you want, child? What are you looking for?” 

He looks up, uncertain, and she finds herself taking his hand, reaching into his thoughts to find the desire that lies there. His mind is full of pain, and violence, and a fierce, quiet protection, and most of all – what he seeks. She sees the word, and she opens her hand, and the mirror fragments dance into shape at her bidding. 

They stare down at what’s written. Yennefer feels something easing inside her, a shard of glass from a broken mirror melting away. The boy – Geralt, of course it’s Geralt – is sobbing; the glass dust falling from his eyes. 

The shards in front of them spell _Ciri_. 

“That’s what I forgot,” Geralt says, like a weight has lifted from him. His hand is fading from hers. The room is fading around them. Yennefer turns to see the princess of Kaer Sond, beautiful, her white dress all cobwebs and tatters. She smiles, and then she, too, is coming apart, the way a dream does just before waking. 

It’s very cold. 

There’s frost caught in her eyelashes, ice on her dress. Her bones creak as she moves, her breath smoking out on the still air. 

She sits up and then stands, panting, exhausted down to the last hair on her head. 

There are thick stone walls around her, half crumbled into dust. Under the fallen snow, she sees the shapes of bodies, flesh long since fallen away. Once this would have been a feasting hall, perhaps, in the midst of a castle built for defence, not for a story. The real Kaer Sond, abandoned centuries ago and passed into myth.

She staggers forward. At one end of the room, steps lead down to a courtyard, and in the courtyard she can see black armour, white hair, and a girl leaning over him, shaking his shoulders. 

“Geralt!” the girl is crying. “Wake up!” 

She’s young, with long pale hair. If you didn’t know better, you might think she was the witcher’s daughter. Yennefer knows better. But before she can say anything, Geralt’s eyes open and he surges upward, wrapping the girl in his arms. “ _Ciri_ ,” he says. “Child, I’m so sorry.”

“You should be,” the girl sniffs. “You brought us to this stupid place to shelter and then you collapsed and left me alone! And I was a bird!”

Yennefer clears her throat. “Princess Cirilla,” she says, and bows, the way mages do. 

“Yennefer,” Geralt says, his expression entirely open and uncomplicatedly glad. 

She doesn’t know what to do with that. She falls back on a glare. “I see once again it fell to me to get you out of trouble. You and that dumb sidekick of yours. Where is he?” 

Geralt and Cirilla exchange worried glances and the girl takes off running. Geralt limps after her slowly; Yennefer follows, slower still. Clearly the girl wasn’t drained the way they were, it seems unlikely she has more life energy than a witch and a witcher. 

They find Jaskier on the other side of the entrance to the ruined castle, as if he barely set foot in the place before it swallowed him whole. He’s curled into himself, around his lute. His lips and fingers are tinged with blue and he looks somehow lesser, like the spell has wasted him away, leeching muscle and colour. 

Geralt rolls him onto his back and tries to rouse him but he sleeps on, shallow breaths drifting faintly into the air. Yennefer tightens her arms around herself, shivering. “We should get out of here,” she says. “We all need warmth, food. The girl’s half frozen, Geralt.” 

She can’t stop the words coming out sharp, but Geralt doesn’t seem to mind. He simply nods. “We were heading to Kaer Morhen,” he says. “Can you get us there?”

“I did have things I was doing,” she points out, for the principle of it, while she considers. She’s weak: not as bad as after Sodden Hill, but as bad as she’s been for years. But they can’t stay here; leaving the weather aside, she wants to put this mausoleum behind her. She’ll just have to make it work. 

“You’ll need to show me the way,” she says and watches it land, the part where he’s going to have to trust her with the location of his home, the secret witcher keep. She sees him decide. He hefts Jaskier into his arms. Ciri picks up the lute. Yennefer calls their other things to them, the paltry packs they came with, her own travelling case. 

Geralt’s mind is open when she looks, a vision of a towering castle on a crag, cracked and abandoned. It’s eerily similar to where they are now, but she can find the way easy enough. 

The portal opens. She follows them through. And that’s the last thing she knows for a while. 

There’s a cool breeze overhead, warring with a steady heat coming from one side. A young high voice is humming nearby. She can hear pages turning. She opens her eyes. 

The bed she’s lying in is piled high with musty furs; the ceiling above her is cracked and apparently held together by cobwebs. On a chair beside her, Princess Cirilla, the Lion Cub of Cintra, is reading a book and murmuring to herself. Yennefer clears her dry and aching throat. 

“You’re awake!” the girl cries, and sits up, the book falling to the floor. She fetches a jug and water, and waits while Yennefer drinks deep. “It’s been days. Geralt said you were all worn out. He fed you water a couple of times, he had to massage it down your throat, it was weird.” 

She talks like she’s been waiting to speak for years. Yennefer winces, and pushes herself up in bed. She’s wearing a plain long shirt; Geralt’s, presumably. She spares a second to hate him fiercely for seeing her so weak, and then moves on. “I got us to Kaer Morhen, then.”

“Yes!” Ciri says. “It’s brilliant. They have a hot spring, and fresh meat most days, and the other witchers don’t really say much but still more than Geralt does. They’re taking it in turns teaching me to fight. Geralt says you can train me in magic, when you’re feeling better.” 

“He does, does he,” Yennefer says. She reaches for her chaos and is relieved to find it mostly replenished, a banked fire burning at her core. Next to her, she can sense Ciri’s power like lightning, a wild uncontrolled streak of pure force twisting the air. She blinks. “Yes, I can see I’ll have to. Where is he?”

“I’ll get him,” Ciri says, and is up and gone before Yennefer can stop her. She sighs and lies back on the bed again. 

When Geralt comes, he’s wearing a plain white shirt and cotton trousers, unarmoured in a way she’s never seen him. Something in her rises at the sight and she presses it down ruthlessly. He’s not yet forgiven. 

He must see it, for a certain hopeful air fades from him and he merely nods and passes over the plate of food he’s brought. It’s simple fare, but she eats it down to the last crumb, and drains the jug of water. He watches, and waits, and then says, “I owe you an apology.” 

“You do.” 

“I don’t regret making the wish,” he says. “I would rather have you living. But I regret that you feel bound to me; that was not my intention. I believe I would care for you regardless but I understand you cannot trust that.” The speech is clearly rehearsed but no less sincere for that. Sincerity always disarms her. It’s not something she’s ever aspired to, but she enjoys it in others. 

“It was stupid to mess with a force like the djinn,” she tells him, and he raises an eyebrow at her pointedly, and she has to laugh. “You’re right; I can’t trust it. But if our recent experience has taught me anything it’s that everything is more complicated than you’d like it to be. Love is always a question of gains and losses and compromises. You can’t care for anyone without imposing something of yourself on them. And there are worse people I could be bound to.” 

“Thank you,” he says quietly. He looks sombre and grateful and she has to turn her head away a moment, for fear she would do something stupid otherwise, like kiss him. 

“The girl says you need my help,” she says instead, moving on to more familiar ground, favours asked and granted. “She certainly needs training. She’s immensely powerful.” 

“She is,” Geralt agrees. “She’ll make a formidable woman, one day, if we can keep her safe.” He looks almost scared at the thought of failure, and it makes her feel fond all over again. 

“We will,” Yennefer promises, amused as she says it, for who’s the one tying her to his fate now? “You have my word on that. You know that was what broke the spell in the end? The love you have for her. A love that isn’t about taking or needing or wanting; that just is.” 

“It’s new to me,” Geralt says, uncertain, vulnerable like he rarely is, and this time she gives in to temptation and takes his hand. He squeezes her fingers briefly, before returning to his usual blank resolve. “Yennefer, there’s another thing I’d ask your help with.” 

She nods at him to continue, and he swallows, passes an unsteady hand over his face. “It’s Jaskier,” he says. “Vesemir thinks he might be sunk too deep for waking.” 

Her feelings are a tangled knot: irritation, that even now the bard is causing trouble; jealousy, that he remains her competition for Geralt’s attention; concern, for the man who was lying in the snow; and the sense of a debt, for the story that rescued them in the end. She resolves to pick at it later, and says, “take me to him.” 

They have Jaskier in a room not far from the one she woke up in, the same bed piled with furs, the same fire, the same dilapidated plaster and creaking floorboards. They’ve kept him warm, but he’s as pale as when they found him on the cobblestones at Kaer Sond, and the breaths he takes are faint and gasping. She can find no trace of him in the room, no sense of a living presence. 

She doesn’t claim to know what she’s doing; healing was never her strength. But she sits down by him, and rests a hand on his forehead, and goes looking. 

In the real world, she doubts her journey lasts more than a few seconds. It feels long though: a long, long road, with a wind pushing her back all the way, so that she has to grit her teeth and keep going. She’s panting for breath herself by the time something gives way, and she finds herself in her old chamber in Rinde, candles flickering all around her. 

Jaskier lies bleeding on the bed. It’s a memory, but not a memory. When Geralt brought him to her, his shirt was stained with blood, he was hacking up great gouts of it from broken lungs. It was bad, but curable. This is worse. His clothes are in shreds, deep cuts weeping along his arms, his legs, blood spilling from his eyes and nose and throat. The bed is saturated, liquid dripping from it to pool on the floor. 

She goes to him, and he frowns to see her. When he tries to speak, blood dribbles up and over his lips. She has to bend over to hear him. 

“Don’t tell Geralt,” he whispers. “I don’t want him to know it was like this.” 

As always, Yennefer takes refuge from fear in annoyance. “Don’t be stupid,” she says. “I won’t tell him anything, you can tell him yourself.” 

His fingers twitch. “I think,” he says, “that I’ve played myself out, this time.” 

“You’re weak,” she agrees, “but it’s nothing rest and food won’t cure. You just need to wake up.” 

He smiles. “I’m so tired,” he tells her. “I’ve been following him half my life, and he doesn’t want me. Easier to stop trying.” 

Gods preserve her from melodramatic men. “You’re both such idiots. When Geralt got caught in a spell that makes people rescue their loved ones, _you_ got dragged in a day later. He is entirely shit at expressing his emotions like an adult, but he does love you. Honestly! Love is the easy part. It’s everything else that’s difficult.” 

“Maybe you like it difficult,” Jaskier says sniffily, a bit more himself, and she bares her teeth at him. 

“Maybe I do,” she says. “Maybe you do too. Simplicity doesn’t always make for the best stories.” 

“Hmmm,” Jaskier says, spitting up another mouthful of blood. “I resent it when you’re right, witch.” 

“I know,” she says. “It’s a terrible burden to bear, always being right. But I am, so deal with it.” 

“Tough love!” he says. He sounds delighted, all of a sudden. No one else she’s met can switch from melancholy to joy the way he does. She used to think it shallow. She’s less sure about that now. Maybe it’s a hard-won choice he’s making. “All right, then. How do I wake up?” 

She goes to sit by him, putting one hand on his forehead, mirroring her pose back in the real world, far above. “You know how this goes, bard. Listen to me, and make a wish.”

He laughs, and she knows that he’s remembering it as she is. The first time they met. He closes his eyes. “ _I wish very badly to leave this place forever_ ,” he says, and she latches onto the thin edge of determination in his voice, and holds it, keeps holding it, as they rise, back into the warm bedroom at Kaer Morhen, and he opens his eyes, and takes a big, gasping breath. 

He says Geralt’s name, and Geralt pulls him into his arms, and Yennefer leaves them to it. 

She doesn’t see the bard for a while after that. Ciri reports that he still spends much of his time sleeping, and the rest of it split between eating and complaining that Geralt won’t give him his lute yet. Yennefer spends her afternoons trying to unravel the mysteries of Ciri’s power, the mornings either resting or working her way through the ancient tomes of the keep’s library. She finds Geralt’s fellow witchers to be taciturn men who treat her with a wary respect and Cirilla with untrammeled delight. It’s been a long time since there was new life in this place. 

Geralt himself is polite, a little distant. He’s waiting for her to come to him, she realises, and is both pleased and irked by the thoughtfulness of it. 

“Jaskier says it’s just as well he woke up,” Ciri tells her one afternoon. “He says I’m going to do great things and he’s going to sing songs about it. He says not many bards get a front row seat for destiny.” 

“What do you think about it?” Yennefer asks, caught by the uncertain tone in the child’s voice. 

“I’m not sure I want to be destined for great things,” Ciri says. 

“Then you don’t have to be,” Yennefer says. “No one will make you.” 

Ciri thinks about that, her tongue sticking out. “I would like to stop people getting killed for no reason,” she says. “My grandmother slaughtered so many, and then my countrymen died in turn. It seems so stupid. What does anyone get out of it?” 

“Power, I suppose,” Yennefer says. “The world does terrible things in the name of power.” 

“Then I’ll do what I can for the powerless,” Ciri says with an air of decision, and is surprised – though not as much as Yennefer herself – when Yennefer hugs her. 

“You’ll be a great woman, cub,” Yennefer says. “I look forward to seeing what you choose to do with it. But right now, you’re avoiding practice, don’t think I haven’t noticed.” 

Ciri rolls her eyes at her, and returns to work, and Yennefer feels the battered thing she calls a heart beat a little easier. 

A week after the bard wakes, Geralt brings him down to the dining hall to eat. He’s still too thin, his eyes still a little dull, but he makes up for his weakness in noise: chatter and music and long, winding stories. Ciri is entranced; the other witchers confused; Geralt amused. Yennefer ignores him the way one would the whine of a mosquito. 

They send Ciri off to bed and not long after Jaskier stops speaking mid-sentence with a yawn, and Geralt picks him up again, ignoring his protests. Yennefer has been arguing with the witcher about whether Ciri is ready to start practising with true blades, so she follows him up to his room to continue the debate. 

Except it’s not his room, she realises as they enter. It’s _their_ room. Geralt’s swords in one corner, propped up next to Jaskier’s lute. 

She swallows against the lump in her throat. She wishes that she weren’t so keenly affected by the thought of being left out. 

“I get cold,” Jaskier says, from the bed where Geralt’s deposited him. “That’s all. It’s not – it’s not what you’re thinking.” 

“For fuck’s sake,” she says, furious. “Why not? What’s stopping you?” 

“Yen,” Geralt says. He comes to her. His golden eyes are soft and warm as he gazes at her. “What do you think?” 

“Oh,” she says, stupidly, and then his mouth is on hers and she’s kissing him back with all the fervour of a sailor who’s been waiting a long time to find land. He pulls her with him to the bed, and she finds herself leaning back in Jaskier’s embrace as he unlaces and unbuttons and tugs away her dress until her top is bare. She feels his lips at her neck, his hands reaching round to hold her breasts. 

Geralt is still kissing her, bent forward over the edge of the bed. He kneels to pull her dress down her thighs, and then kisses those, trailing a path up to her cunt. 

“Wait,” she says, and both of them go still, before her, behind her. “What are we doing?” 

“I decided it didn’t have to be difficult,” Jaskier says. “You love each other, I love him, you I find completely terrifying but there’s no denying you’re gorgeous, so, you know. I thought we could make it simple.” 

She twists to look at him. He looks scared of her, as he should, but there’s desire caught up in it. He did always seem the type to fling himself into danger, regardless of the consequences. She bites at his lips, and he sighs. “Is that a yes?” he asks. 

“Yes,” she says, and hears Geralt huff out a satisfied noise as he returns to work, his tongue gently pressing against her and then in. Jaskier returns to sucking at her neck, one hand circling her left nipple, the other reaching lower, stroking against her clit as Geralt licks at the deepest part of her. They keep at it, gentle but firm, and after a time warmth rises through her body, a crescendoing wave that leaves her shaking in their hands, again, again, again. 

She can feel the hard press of Jaskier’s cock against her back. She turns, and he moves back up the bed obligingly, sitting against the headboard while she kneels over him to free him from his pants. “You do have good ideas,” she tells him, and he closes his eyes and moans when she gives him her fingers to suck on, before she moves them to his cock. He’s not as wide as Geralt but pretty enough, flush and long and solid beneath her hand. 

“Yennefer,” he says, “Yennefer,” and she laughs. 

“Lost for words, bard?” 

“Never,” he insists, though he gasps as she moves her mouth to take him in, hot and human. “Oh, gods, you’ll kill me, woman. I always knew you wanted to. What a way to go, though, don’t stop, I love the feel of you, Geralt, did she do this to you? It’s so nice, I didn’t think you’d be so nice—”

She nips at his cockhead, to punish him for that, and he cries out, muffling it against his fist. “Not nice,” he says. “Wicked, that’s right, isn’t it, Yennefer, a wicked witch, putting me under your spell—” He whines as she slaps at his balls, and she turns to look at Geralt, who’s undressed now too, standing watching with a lazy pleased grin on his face. 

“Does he ever shut up?” she asks.

“Rarely,” Geralt says. 

Jaskier makes a wordless noise of outrage as she draws him back into her mouth. She spares a tendril of power to press against his balls, the entrance to his hole. “Oh, fuck, oh, mmf, fucking hells, _don’t stop doing that_.” 

Geralt kneels on the bed behind her, puts his hands on her hips to lift her higher. She’s bent in a triangle, arse in the air, mouth on Jaskier, and she feels Geralt’s fingers against her cunt again, a question. She nods, and he pushes them in, getting her wet again, filling her up, before his thick, wide cock presses smoothly into her and she groans, hears Jaskier sob as her pleasure vibrates around him. Jaskier’s hands are tangled in her hair, and he moves, threading them under her chest until he finds her breasts to stroke and hold. 

Behind her, Geralt is rocking into her slowly, carefully, and she lets the momentum rock her forward onto Jaskier’s cock, back and forth as he bucks in her mouth. She’s panting, little sharp gasps of air, and he reacts to each one of them, pulsing against her tongue. He’s humming now, beyond words, and Geralt is holding her hips, carefully but firmly, pulling her back onto his cock, each slide a moment of pure pleasure. She has no thoughts, no worries, no fury in her, just closeness and care and heat, and Jaskier comes with a low cry, and Geralt moves quicker, and when she comes she shatters, and it doesn’t hurt at all. 

When things start to make sense again she’s lying cradled between them, her head resting on Jaskier’s shoulder, tucked into his neck; Geralt behind her, holding her close. She stretches her legs, and sighs a long shuddering breath. _I chose this_ , she thinks. Maybe her fate is tied with Geralt’s, the way Geralt’s is with Ciri’s. But you can choose what you do with it. 

“Mmmm,” Geralt says, sounding pleased with himself. 

“I told you it was a good idea,” Jaskier tells him. 

“You discussed it?” Yennefer asks, curious. 

“I told him it was a good idea,” Jaskier says, “and he said _hmmm_ , and I took that as agreement. You may have noticed that he’s not the most in touch with his feelings. But then again nor are you. So I took it upon myself to engineer a situation that seemed most likely to get us all what we wanted.” 

“What I want is silence,” she mutters, and he grins, she can feel the curve of his jaw as it moves. 

“As my lady wishes,” he tells her, and dips his fingers back inside her, wringing out the last stray shudders of desire before sucking them into his mouth to clean them. 

“Filthy,” she says. 

“Ah, no,” he insists. “I just have a very vivid imagination.” 

“Go to sleep, Jaskier,” Geralt rumbles. “Save the talking for tomorrow.” 

“I can think of better things to do tomorrow than talk,” he says. He strokes a finger down Yennefer’s back, and Geralt catches it in his hand and holds him still. 

Yennefer remembers the first time they met: Jaskier dying, Geralt refusing to admit that he cared, she only concerned with what she could get from them. How different to now, to this drifting easiness, this sense of things freely given. Maybe the bard was right: love is simple. Making it last is complicated, balancing all the needing and wanting and hating and fearing that goes along with it. But she and the bard are both persistent about what they want, and Geralt wants them both to be happy, and maybe it will work. Maybe they can make it work. 

“Tell us about tomorrow, then,” she says. 

Jaskier says, “I thought perhaps Geralt could use that rope he carries in his pack to bind me to the bed, just here, tied into silence and stillness, while he pleases you, my lady, worships you with all that single-minded focus of his. And you could make me feel what you’re feeling so that I don’t need to be touched at all, so that I come when you come, over and over, knowing that everything between the three of us is shared. No debts to pay, no demands, just a fair exchange.” 

She feels a tightness in her, picturing it, him watching, unable to reach out and touch, while she touches him with her mind, while Geralt touches every part of her body. Behind her, Geralt’s cock twitches against her flesh. “It’s a good story,” she says. 

“I have lots more,” he promises, and she goes to sleep thinking of all the stories they might share.

**Author's Note:**

> I blame Stephen Sondheim and _Into the Woods_ for this one. (Kaer Sond, geddit?) The original idea was to write Jaskier as a princess, but then I decided it was only fair that they all get a turn. It got somewhat darker than anticipated, but that’s fairytales for you. 
> 
> You don’t need me to name the stories but here they are: Cinderella, a passing reference to Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty and The Snow Queen. Ciri’s transformation is lifted from The Blue Bird. 
> 
> Kaer Sond is based on Neuschwanstein Castle, which also inspired the Disney logo. It was built by King Ludwig II, aptly known as the Fairytale King, and you should google both him and his castles because they are quite, quite mad.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Once There Was](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28548342) by [greedy_dancer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greedy_dancer/pseuds/greedy_dancer)




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